Gluby's Comprehensive Guide
to Herbalism Mods

A guide to Morrowind mods affecting
the gathering of ingredients, reagents and crafting materiel

Version 1.31 (Sep. 14, 2009)

Broken links reviewed May 31, 2019

Introduction

In Morrowind, an herbalism mod is a must because of Bethesda's less-than-inspired treatment of plants and herb-gathering. Bethesda's default method of harvesting plants treats them all like containers; when you click on one, it brings up the contents, and you either drag the contents to your inventory or click "Take All." It's tedious, and, thanks to the modding community, unnecessary.

The various herbalism listed herein mods fix the problem by automating plant-gathering; press space to activate, and a feedback message tells you what you found. It makes the game much more smooth and enjoyable. In addition, they reduce the respawn time for plants from the default of four months to one, and many bring other enhancements.

The question, then, is which of various available mods, several with extremely similar names, to use? This guide provides short descriptions, feature comparisons and screenshots of each of the available herbalism and ingredient-gathering mods.

At the end of this document is a FAQ addressing several issues of concern with these mods (particularly the avoidance of conflicts with certain widely-used mods) which, it is hoped, will be helpful. I highly recommend at least glancing through the FAQ section.

Because the subject matter is so similar and sometimes may therefore conflict with these mods, this guide also addresses other mods affecting the gathering of "Ingredients" (which includes alchemy reagents, food, minerals, animal parts and so forth), such as those that improve the handling of mining and the preponderance of animal loot.

Herbalism Mods

Herbalism v1.3 [Balor]: The original herbalism mod. Setting the standard for the rest of the mods on this list, Balor's Herbalism eliminates the tedium of plant harvesting by doing away with the standard container pop-up box when one clicks on a plant, instead simply transferring the contents automatically to inventory via a script attached to the plant. [Oct. 2004. Requires Tribunal, and includes an optional plugin for Bloodmoon.]

• Chances of harvesting ingredients are derived from a newly-created Herbalism skill and, to a lesser extent, the Alchemy skill. Without adequate skill, one will not tend to recover much, and those below a certain minimum cannot harvest any at all. The skill improves with each use, whether herbs were successfully gathered or not.
• The amount gathered has a chance of doubling or tripling at higher skill levels.
• Once picked, a plant disappears, reappearing on the first day of the next month.
• Affects only plants, not kollops, ore veins or other reagent sources.
• Reports amount of and type of ingredients gathered via standard, unintrusive messagebox at bottom of the screen.
• Uses fairly extensive plant scripts, but the overall framerate impact is minimal (between one and two, according to the author). For a while, the mod was known to cause an egregious decrease in framerate, but the problem was actually due to a bug in the game scripting engine, introduced in the Tribunal expansion, that caused a certain script command, used in this mod, to consume far more CPU time than necessary. Bethesda has since corrected the bug.
• A drawback of this mod, as can be seen in the screenshots, is that the syntactical handling of the gathering messageboxes is frequently fairly clumsy. For example: "You collect 1 hypha facia(s)," followed by "You skillfully collect 2 hypha facias"; or, worse, "You collect 1 ampoule pod(es)."
• Expansion available for Tamriel Rebuilt flora: tek_604's Tamriel Rebuilt/Herbalism v1.0. This version is a patch, not a full replacement for the mod; it requires Balor's original version to be run concurrently with it.

Balor's Herbalism v1.3 Screenshots
"Noteworthy Success" and Herbalism skill increase messages.	Failure message when Herbalism skill too low for even an attempt.	Plural syntax gaffes.
More plural syntax gaffes.

Herbalism v1.1 Seed Version [Balor, ed. Shanjaq]: Shanjaq's modification is an upgrade of a previous version of Balor's Herbalism that makes plants also yield plantable seeds. [Mar. 2003. Thanks to Morten79 at PES for recovering this from Internet obscurity and uploading it there.]

• As Balor's Herbalism, above, but plants will also yield seeds on certain moon phases, with different plants responding to different moon phases. The resulting seeds can be planted wherever dropped, and will become a plant in one month.

Shanjaq's Herbalism v1.1 Seed Version Screenshots
Success and failure messageboxes.	Herbalism skill improvement message.	Extra herbs gathered for higher skill.
Seeds in inventory (note that, since they are scripted items, they do not stack).

Herbalism Lite v1.0 [Shakeidas]: A simpler alternative that also automatically transfers gathered ingredients to inventory without a container dialog when one clicks on harvestable plants, but avoids the use of new skills. It is particularly notable for the fact that, unlike the others, picked plants do not visually disappear, which avoids spoiling the aesthetic appeal of the landscape, but makes it impossible to visually know which have been picked or respawned. [Dec. 2003. Modular plugins: one for Morrowind, one for Tribunal, and one for Bloodmoon. Note that the base Morrowind plugin has errant GMSTs that should be cleaned from the mod before use. The Tribunal and Bloodmoon expansion plugins are clean.]

• Chances of recovering ingredients and amount gathered are set up to give an average yield of 1.6 reagents per plant, with the exception of slough ferns (2.7) and kollops (0.5).
  
• Once harvested, plants do not disappear, but are not harvestable until the first day of the next month.
• No feedback messageboxes are given informing the player of reagents gathered—a messagebox is only shown if an already-harvested plant is activated a second time, reporting nothing found.
• Affects kollops as well.
  
• Scripted from scratch, with influence by Balor's mod, and with an eye toward minimizing framerate impact.
• Expansion available for Tamriel Rebuilt flora: Tealpanda's Tamriel Rebuilt/Herbalism Lite v2.0. This is a full replacement for Shakeidas's original version; there is no need to use both mods simultaneously.

Shakeidas's Herbalism Lite v1.0 Screenshots
The only feedback given, when one attempts to petulantly pick a plucked plant a second time.

Herbalism Redux v1.12a [Mode_Locrian]: Tries to strike a balance between Balor's Herbalism and its minimalist alternatives. Like other herbalism mods, it makes clicking on plants transfer gathered ingredients to inventory automatically. [Aug. 2004.]

• Flat 80% chance of recovering ingredients.
  
• Amount gathered from each plant is based on the visual nature of the plant (how many stalks/flowers/etc. in the 3D model, etc.).
  
• Once picked, a plant disappears, reappearing 30 days later—each plant is individually dated, rather than all plants automatically respawning on the first day of each month.
  
• Messagebox reporting of amount and type of ingredients gathered can be toggled on and off, a feature unique to this mod. (However, the messages used in this and the other herbalism mods are helpful, unintrusive and easily-ignored.)
  
• Includes an alternate plugin that incorporates MagicNakor's Bloated Morrowind (see the entry for this mod, below).
  
• Created from scratch to use tight, optimized scripting for low impact.

Mode_Locrian's Herbalism Redux v1.12a Screenshots
Feedback messages for success and failure.	Variation in amount gathered.

Advanced Herbalism v1.1 [Andoreth]: This is the cadillac of herbalism mods, and boasts an impressive set of features, notable among which is the ability to plant seeds anywhere—even in transportable planters—and to dig up the plants if desired. [Apr. 2004. Includes variant plugins for different combinations of Morrowind with and without the expansions.]

• Chance of recovering ingredients is based solely on a newly-created Herbalism skill.
• New Herbalism skill improves with use, and can be improved with the aid of several new NPC skill trainers and skill books.
• Amount of ingredients gathered is affected by Herbalism skill.
• Once picked, a plant disappears, reappearing 30 days later—each plant is individually dated, rather than all plants automatically respawning on the first day of each month.
• Extensive feedback via standard messageboxes, reporting the amount of and type of ingredients gathered, as well as improvements in Herbalism skill in a manner consistent with skill improvement messages for other skills.
• Incorporates Shanjaq's seed scripts (see Herbalism v1.1, Seed Edition, above), making it so plants yield seeds during certain moon phases, and allowing the player to grow new plants anywhere. Further expands upon Shanjaq's seeds as follows:
  
  • Allows the player to dig up and permanently remove (delete) plants that have been grown from seeds by using an equippable "hoe ring."
    
  • Modifies some vendors and containers to sell/contain seeds (the merchant NPCs themselves are not modified).
    
  • Has an available add-on with purchasable planters for transportable plants.
• MagicNakor's Bloated Morrowind (see the entry for this mod, below) is integrated into the mod.
• Some input from Balor's Herbalism, but mostly original coding, with slightly heavier scripting than Balor's mod.

Andoreth's Advanced Herbalism v1.1 Screenshots
Herbalism skill improvement message.	Higher Herbalism skill can result in significantly more herbs gathered from a plant.	Finding a seed.
Finding a seed on one plant, and getting nothing from another.	Sara Agustine, the Herbalism skill trainer in Seyda Neen.

Herbalism for Purists v1.22 [Syclonix]: Another minimalist alternative that eliminates the ingredient-gathering dialog box tedium and makes harvested plants temporarily disappear. Designed specifically to keep to the original "game balance" (i.e., not changing the original harvest chances and quantities) and to have minimal impact on framerate. [Aug. 2005. Includes variant plugins for different combinations of Morrowind with and without the expansions.]

• Does not modify chances of gathering ingredients or amounts gathered.
  
• Once picked, a plant disappears, reappearing 30 days later—each plant is individually dated, rather than all plants automatically respawning on the first day of each month.
• Simple but effective feedback messageboxes reporting amounts and types of ingredients gathered.
  
• Created from scratch to be tightly-scripted and low-impact.
  
• Incorporates Max and Nigedo's Flora Glow and MagicNakor's Bloated Morrowind mods (see below).

Syclonix's Herbalism for Purists v1.21 Screenshots
Variation in amount of herbs gathered.	Gathering spore pods.	No herbs found message.
Making off with multiple mushrooms.	Author's screenshot showing the Flora Glow effect.

Graphic Herbalism v1.2 [ManaUser]: The latest addition to the Herbalism mods scene that one-ups the visual sophistication of its predecessors by making it so, when most plants are harvested, only the part picked disappears from the plant, instead of the entire plant itself. It is still fairly purist in operation, though it includes optional modular extensions to affect minerals, to place bloat spores in caves, and to require tools for harvesting certain plants. [Nov. 2008.]

• Does not modify chances of gathering ingredients or amounts gathered.
  
• Once picked, the harvestable part of the plant picked (the blossoms on the stoneflower or the berries on the comberry bush, for example) disappears for 30 days, after which it restores and becomes harvestable again. Plants that logically are harvested whole (marsh merrow and corkbulb, for example) do disappear in their entirety for 30 days as per other similar mods. Each plant is individually dated.
  
• Messagebox and sound effect provide feedback on whether harvesting succeeded and how many ingredients were obtained.
  
• The 30-day respawn period can be adjusted in-game to preference.
  
• Modifies kollops and kwama egg sacks as well, and includes two optional expanded modifications contained in separate plugins:
  • The first optional plugin adds bloat spores to caves.
  • The second optional plugin applies the mod's visual and functional changes to minerals (glass, ebony, etc.) and makes it so certain plants and minerals require a certain tool to gather effectively.
    
• Note on Plant Texture Replacers: Graphic Herbalism introduces a few new textures where required to display depleted minerals and four kinds of harvested plants, which could possibly look awkward in a few limited instances if using a plant texture replacer as well.
• Expansion available for Tamriel Rebuilt flora: Spiffyman's Graphic Herbalism TR v1.0. This is a full replacement for ManaUser's original version; there is no need to use both mods simultaneously.

ManaUser's Graphic Herbalism Screenshots
Author's Screenshot 1: Stoneflower plants before and after harvesting, with feedback.	Author's Screenshot 2: Mucksponge plants in their fungal glory.	Author's Screenshot 3: Spiny lloramor plants.
Author's Screenshot 4: A plucked Holly Berry plant, with berries gone and feedback message showing the culprit.

Ultra Light Herbalism [Qwert]: Based on Balor's Herbalism and Korath's Herbalism Minimal, Qwert's Ultra Light Herbalismis the most minimalist of the herbalism mods, aimed at players who simply want plants that disappear when harvested and respawn monthly, in an ultra-lightweight script, without changing anything else. The mod does not automate how plants are harvested, leaving unchanged Bethesda's default container-looting method. [Apr. 2003.]

• Does not change the plant container dialogues; plants are harvested as in the unmodified game (as containers).
• Does not modify chances of gathering ingredients or amounts gathered.
  
• Once the plant is activated, it disappears until the first day of the next month.
  
• No feedback provided; standard container looting dialogue with "Take All" button.
  
• Modifies only plants; does not modify kollops or other sources.
• Uses a small and efficient script for plants, offering possibly the least impact of all herbalism mods (though on most systems no significant difference is likely to be seen).
• A small drawback of this mod is that the plant is deactivated (disappears) at the instant it is activated, whether or not the player actually takes the ingredient from the plant or not. If you accidentally press space twice, whatever it had on it is lost.

Other Related Mods

Explorers v2.5 [Lord Lionmane]: Not strictly an herbalism mod, Explorers attaches a script to all harvestable plants that makes it so they have a small chance of having a treasure chest whenever "opened." The chests can be trapped, and may have guardians or bandits nearby. The mod also introduces "Mind Gems" (a new item), modifies urns to occasionally contain them and to spawn guardians, and creates two NPCs who will buy them.

The mod is included here because, by virtue of modifying all plants, it occupies the same field as the herbalism mods. and therefore directly conflicts with them. However, Zappara's Explorers Addon Pack v1.1 provides compatibility patches for Advanced Herbalism, Herbalism Redux and Resources Enhanced. See also Zappara's Disturb the Dead Addon Pack v2.0, which contains a compatibility patch for Zappara's Disturb the Dead v3.31 making both mods' modifications to urns work together. [Nov. 2004.]

Nymeria's Monthly Respawn [Nymeria]: Normally, plants respawn every 4 months. This makes them do it every month, and should only be used if you want monthly plant respawning but do not wish to use an herbalism mod (all of which include some variant of the same functionality). [May 2004. Also included as a separate and optional add-on with Taddeus and Nymeria's Necessities of Morrowind.]

Minerals Respawn v1.1 [Evelas]: Makes diamond, ebony, glass, adamantium and stahlrim rocks respawn monthly. Like Nymeria's respawn, this is a more minimalist approach to respawning. [May 2004. Compatible with Complete Morrowind and its modular counterparts. Split into separate ESPs: one for base Morrowind, and one for the expansions.]

Bloated Morrowind [MagicNakor]: Bethesda designed and included a plant in the game, Bloat Spores, that it neglected to implement, making it such that the player must purchase Bloat. This mod implements Bloat Spores into the game by placing them in select locations in the wilderness. [Oct. 2003. Only necessary if the herbalism mod you use does not include it.]

MagicNakor's Bloated Morrowind Screenshots
Author's Screenshot 1: Bloat Spores in the wilderness.

Flora Glow v1.0 [Max a.k.a. ~NOBODY~ and Nigedo]: Replaces the original models for all luminous flora (Luminous Russula, Draggle Tail and Violet Coprinus) with glow-mapped versions that make each plant actually luminous. [Jul. 2004. Will conflict with herbalism mods, but the changes can be merged using TESTool. Or, alteratively, one can manually integrate them using the CS or another tool with relative ease.]

Animal Loot Mod [Sendai45]: Increases probability of recovering animal-part ingredients and commodities from slain creatures to 100%, alleviating the scarcity of such items. Also increases the yield of certain animal parts (horkers, for example, now yield two tusks instead of just one). [Feb. 2004. Includes three different plugins for different game expansions; Morrowind- and Tribunal-only versions have dirty GMSTs that should be removed before use.]

Gluby's Creature Loot Mod [Gluby]: Based on the same idea as Sendai45's Animal Loot Mod, above, this mod changes the probabilities and possible quantities of animal-part ingredients recoverable from slain creatures in accordance with their size, relevant characteristics, and likelihood of damaging the parts while fighting the beast, avoiding flat 100% probabilities of animal-part recovery. So, for example, killing a bear will tend to net up to five measures of bear pelt, averaging between 3 and 4 pelts. [Nov. 2007. Requires both expansions.]

Tribunal Bloodmoon Ingredients [PCC a.k.a. Blockhead]: Retroactively adds the ingredients introduced in Bloodmoon and Tribunal to the general ingredient leveled lists, so that there is a chance of finding them in containers throughout the rest of Vvardenfell. [Jun. 2004.]

Resources Enhanced [TheLys]: A small mod that introduces visual gathering effects for Kwama Eggs and Kollops, and allows the mining of raw ebony, glass, adantium and glass in mines by hitting them with a miner's pick. [Jun. 2004. Will likely conflict with other mods that affect mining, such as Indestructible's Indy Armorer Mod v1.94.]

Pearls Enhanced v3.0 [Melchior]: Modifies kollops to yield a variety of different kinds of pearls, randomly determined from nine different types ranging in quality and value from Flawed and Defective Pearls to Flawless and Grand Pearls, with a chance to find rare Black and Pink Pearls. Each type of pearl has distinctive icon, texture, and weight and size characteristics. The mod also contains an add-on that expands the variety available to 44 color variants, with each color having distinctive alchemical properties. Note that this mod is not a replacer; the original pearls from vanilla Morrowind are left intact and can be otherwise obtained. [Jul. 2009. Compatibility patches for Herbalism for Purists and Resources Enhanced are available, courtesy of Tetchy, at the mod's main download page linked above.]

Melchior's Pearls Enhanced v3.0 Screenshots
Author's Screenshot 1: Pretty pearls, all in a row.	Author's Screenshot 2: Inventory icons for the new pearls.	Author's Screenshot 3: Pretty colored pearls, all in a row.

Potted Plants v2.0 [Andoreth]: Adds potted plants, purchasable from Ancola's stall in Sadrith Mora, to the game. They function the same as normal static plants in the game, but are portable and automatically respawn their ingredients every 30 days. [Apr. 2004.]

Andoreth's Potted Plants v2.0 Screenshots
Author's Screenshot 1: Potted plants arranged on shelves.

Hunter Modification v1.3 [Garak/Martin Bohnet]: A larger mod that adds a variety of new quests, many of which enable the player to obtain a new kind of ingredient, such as Guar Sinew, Slaughterfish Caviar and Golden Daedraskin, from slain creatures of the appropriate type. In all, nine new ingredients are added, and the player can also brew a new potion, Hammerfell Coffee. [Dec. 2002. The author is not a native English speaker, and the mod suffers from frequent writing errors and gaffes. However, the mod and its scripting are technically quite competent, and the author works around the problem with the AddToLevItem script command by instead attaching scripts to all affected creatures that add the new ingredients to the body of the slain creature via the AddItem command a certain percentage of the time—if the player has learned how to obtain them properly via the appropriate quest, that is. However, this mod will conflict with mods that modify the same creatures. Tribunal not required, but a second ESP with expanded Tribunal journal functionality is provided. The mod contains 12 errant GMSTs that should be removed before use.]

Wild Rare Ingredients v1.00 [Alphax]: A modular collection of bugfixes, now obsolete (see note below) addressing bugs and logic errors regarding the availability of certain alchemical ingredients in the wild. Specifically, it modifies Daedra to yield daedra skin, Ash Ghouls to yield ghoul hearts, and Spriggan to have heartwood past level 3. It also sets holly bushes and horn lilies to respawn. [Feb. 2008. Obsoleted by the Morrowind Patch Project v1.6.4, which has incorporated Alphax's changes.]

FAQ

What potential conflicts are there with other mods?

Do I need to worry about the video framerate impact of using these mods?

Almost surely no nowadays. It was more of an issue in the past because of (1) a bug in Bethesda's scripting code that caused terrible slowdowns that were blamed on the herbalism mods that used the buggy script command, and (2) to a lesser degree, slower computers. Anyone reading this will likely have a modern enough computer that any impact will be negligible, and even fairly older computers will only see a slight impact. The heaviest-scripted mod, Advanced Herbalism, had no noticeable effect on my framerates when I tested it on my medium-end AMD Athlon 64 3000+ from 2005. I include the information for completeness, but it is really not likely to be a concern. Pick the one that has the features you want; the scripting is all fairly similar in impact anyway, despite protestations to the contrary.

Are there potential problem with removing herbalism mods from a game in progress?

Will this or that Herbalism mod work with Tamriel Rebuilt?

Version History

Version 1.31 (Sep. 14, 2009)

• Minor changes to HTML format and credits, references and feedback sections. (No substantial changes to content.)

Version 1.3 (Sep. 1, 2009)

• Extensive revision. Converted to HTML and reformatted for hosting at Mythic. Screenshots now on the page. Updated some links (thanks, Morten79, for uploading a number of lost mods to PES). Added Sendai45's Animal Loot Mod, Qwert's Ultra Light Herbalism, and references in the appropriate mods for the following Tamriel Rebuilt adaptations: Spiffyman's Graphic Herbalism TR v1.0, Tealpanda's Tamriel Rebuilt/Herbalism Lite v2.0, and tek_604's Tamriel Rebuilt/Herbalism v1.0.

Version 1.2 (Aug. 24, 2009)

• Added Melchior's Pearls Enhanced v2.80.

Version 1.1 (Aug. 17, 2009)

• Added ManaUser's Graphic Herbalism v1.2 to the list, and added ManaUser's advice on removing herbalism mods to the FAQ section. Edited entry on Alphax's Wild Rare Ingredients v1.00 to reflect that it has been superseded by the Morrowind Patch Project v1.6.4.

Version 1.02 (Feb. 7, 2008)

• Added Martin Bohnet's Hunter Modification v1.01 and Alphax's Wild Rare Ingredients v1.00 to the list.

Credits and References

As with my other guides, I have drawn heavily for inspiration and research on the work of the Morrowind Mythic Mods team, and these guides are largely built upon their efforts.

Thanks to the ES Forums community for information provided and questions answered, with particular thanks to the following: AfroKing, Nicoliathan, Dragon32, Stacet, Spiffyman, Tetchy, Arkngt and Narfblat.

Thanks to those who have offered thanks and encouragement. It makes it much more rewarding and enjoyable.

And, of course, thanks to those whose who have shared their time, energy and talent with the community in making and releasing these mods.

Feedback

I welcome feedback. Corrections, suggestions, things I've missed, broken links, additional information that would be useful, better technical explanations, hey-that's-kinda-obtuse-writing and all other kinds of feedback help me to make these guides better, so don't hold back. I'm not touchy.

I can be contacted at the Bethesda ES Forums, or by e-mail using the Contact Us links on these pages.

For licensing and permissions information, please see the Permissions section of my main guide.

Screenshots and images on this page were taken by me, unless otherwise indicated.